EV Ver 2.0

In our last EV installment, we briefly covered preconceived notions, false assumptions, current marketing trends and even touched on a little automotive history which is involved in this topic. The EV topic is expansive, and because of that I mentioned the last time around that I wanted to do an installment about charging. Charging, more than anything, tends to separate the EV-Fleet deployment pacesetters from the wanna-be’s. So at the risk of plowing the same ground as last time, let’s review to illustrate the impact of charging (or lack of it) in private usage, before we tangle with fleet.

As you may recall there was a big uptick in EV sales right after the onset of the pandemic. Various EV’s (passenger cars, SUVs and fancy pickups) appeared on the market in quantity, and there were buyers for all of these vehicles. Now that COVID has receded, that same market appears to have gone soft (except for the recent uptick as the recent tax-credit was sunsetting). This is notable as scribes and manufacturers were forecasting almost exponential growth in this sector, so what gives? I’ve not yet applied for my $180,000 federal grant to do a case study on this, but I pretty much believe I can reconstruct the how’s and why’s of this phenomenon or at least form a rational hypothesis.

Market surge: Simply, when in-office reporting was virtually eliminated in many sectors (COVID era), the work that went home typically required only internet, a cell phone and a laptop. These types of jobs tended towards administrative, financial and tech sectors, often upper-middle income vocations offering more discretionary cash than service-sector jobs can provide (those folks were still reporting to work, by the way). These newly home-based workers took inventory of their environmental ethos and started reconciling their actions with their desires. Voila! EV’s started flying off the shelves! Those buyers saw little downside. They could afford the purchase and they could charge the cars in their own garage. If they were apartment or townhome dwellers, they had commercial chargers available around their complex (or at least available at their grocery store parking-lot). Either solution could readily keep up with the 80-150 mi/week they drove during this time – mostly recreational nights-out or chasing household sundries.

Market retreat: And now much of the workforce has been re-mobilized due to the return of brick-and-mortar reporting mandates. So, the EV’s that were bought during the pandemic, which proved fine for running errands or chasing down groceries, were suddenly needed for extensive daily commutes. Those same vehicles started burning through more kWH than modest home chargers could reasonably keep up with, and commercial chargers are/were rarely available within walking distance of work, let alone at work. If they were available, they were most likely only 9.6 kWH level 2 chargers, or the same as typical home-charger capability. Mileage demand on an EV started to outstrip the ability to keep it charged, so conventional or hybrid vehicles started being purchased again for the daily grind. After all, you can still buy gas anywhere. (I’ll have a link at the end of the article to a Go-Fund-Me page to recover that $180K grant I missed out on!)   

So, limited charging infrastructure remains the bane of personal EV adoption and deployment, as it has for well over 100 years now. What are the solutions for the retail market? I’m not sure; there seem to be more companies getting into pay-to-play charging all the time, but those projects are very expensive and scattered. Generally, these companies seek commercial load partners as well as private users to secure a reasonable ROI. Even with that, charger location becomes a developer’s crapshoot because vehicles (and often business client parking locations) are portable, while chargers are not. A developer choosing the wrong location or wrong timing could build an installation providing no revenue and perhaps even endure a forced career change as a result. So, unless efforts are really (really) made to install reasonable chargers when housing is developed, we seem to be at somewhat a fiscal impasse.  

Lack of charging limits commercial EV adoption as well, but for wholly different reasons. Naturally, the more EVs you deploy, the heavier the electrical demand. Let’s choose a vehicle, say a basic EV-crossover with an 86kWH battery. A higher-end level 2 charger (19.2 kWh) will charge our fully depleted hypothetical vehicle in about 4.5(ish) hours and would consume about 92kW to do so (or a 20.5 kWH load). So, charging 10 of these EV’s would consume electricity at a rate of approximately 205 kWH. For perspective, please keep in mind this same electrical consumption could power 7-average middle-class houses for one day, so that 205kWh is not exactly inconsequential.

Also realize that in the Fleet-world a group of 10 units is particularly small. Most operations I’ve been involved in over the years have had 50 or more (to several hundred) units reporting to the same location. Charging 100 similar EV’s on those same chargers would consume electricity at a rate of 2,050 kWH.

Now consider your building(s). My current office is in an old mid-1950’s manufacturing plant converted into a service center. The building is not small; it alone occupies 5.8 acres (along with additional surface parking and several other buildings on a 54-acre campus). Decades ago, huge electrical capacity wasn’t generally needed in commercial or manufacturing facilities (maybe in a steel-mill with electrical furnaces or some such), so it typically wasn’t included in building design. As such the electrical service to run this old building has a primary transformer rated at 2,500 kVA, but to support only the 100-vehicle load discussed above would draw 2,220(ish) kVA by itself. In effect, to have capacity to operate those 100-EVs and the building would require refitting the entire facility electrical system, more than doubling the existing electrical service to support the load.  Also remember; we are only discussing passenger EVs here, not larger commercial trucks with 360-420 kWH batteries.

You could say that all the vehicles would never require a charge at the same time. Likely true, but “would happen” and “could happen” are two different things, and electrical code stresses sizing infrastructure for “could happen”. So, to guarantee reduced load, you would have no choice but to limit the number of available chargers or install chargers with a lower charge-rate capability. Your operations may or may not be able to accommodate the logistics of swapping vehicles on and off a charger between shifts, or a 9+ Hr. charge time. But even if that were feasible, the solution is less than ideal.

So, where does this argument go? I neither categorically endorse nor renounce EV’s in commercial applications. I just caution anyone considering fleet electrification to be aware of what they are asking of the technology.  As mentioned in my prior article, EVs (particularly passenger vehicles) can work pretty darn well in the proper application. My own issued work vehicle is an EV, and it does everything I need. But also, we installed 4-80 amp level-2 chargers to charge our divisional case-study EVs. These chargers required installing an additional 100kVA 480V/3-phase step-down transformer, as we didn’t have sufficient capacity on any available single-phase panel to run these chargers. The cost involved in just that meager electrical project was significantly more than the purchase price of any of our divisional EV’s, and none of those were particularly inexpensive.

If you wanna’ play, you gotta’ pay.